Sylvie Claire / April 30, 2022
Since January 30, six Russian oligarchs close to the government have committed suicide in strange circumstances, fuelling various theories of settling scores against a backdrop of economic sanctions.
Six multimillionaires or billionaires dead since January 30, less than a month before the start of Russian aggression in Ukraine. Curious suicides of Russian oligarchs in the UK, Spain and Russia are becoming increasingly bloody, reveals Newsweek: the last three, those of Vasily Melnikov (in Nizhny Novgorod, Russia, on March 23), Vladislav Avaev (in Moscow on April 18) and Sergey Protosenya (in Lloret de Mar, Spain, on April 19), were accompanied by the death of women and children, killed by gunshot or stabbings.
Before them, Mikhail Watford, an oil billionaire found hanged on February 28 in the UK. Alexander Tyulyakov, found in Saint Petersburg on the 25th. Finally Leonid Shulman, a senior Gazprom executive, was found dead in his bathroom at the end of January.
Many were in the oil and gas business, while others had suffered huge losses due to Western economic sanctions. All seemed to be close, even very close, to the Kremlin. Since these six serial suicides, theories have been flourishing: settling of scores between clans? Disguised purge at the top of the power? A macabre series of suicides that look like coincidences?
In each case, there were no signs of forced entry, the doors were locked from the inside, but there were some disturbing details, such as the eagerness of the Russian authorities to clean up the scenes of the tragedy and to validate the suicide theory. Or the absence of blood traces on the body of Sergey Protosenya. The former CEO of Novatek, number 2 in the Russian gas industry just behind Gazprom, who lived in France, would have killed his wife and daughter with an axe just before his suicide…